First Doom 4 Production Shots Revealed 136
An anonymous reader writes "Actor Brad Hawkins has been tapped to do motion-capture work for Doom 4, and revealed that the game features the military and civilians fighting side by side. Does this mean the game is set on Earth for sure? GGL Wire has an interview with Hawkins and a selection of production shots. '[Filmmaker Mark Bristol] was very specific on the civilians having a certain personality and the military characters having a separate one as well. The body language of the civilians is less, well, "trained." They carry their guns in a looser fashion and are a little sloppier when they run, a little more freestyle. The military characters are sharp as razors, with very swift moves, exact hand positioning and can turn on a dime.'"
This follows news from last month that British novelist Graham Joyce was brought in to develop the story for the game.
...and? (Score:1, Insightful)
Quite frankly, I could care less.
DOOM was great, DOOM II real fun. DOOM III was boring (yes, boring!). DOOM IV has pretty graphics. Oooooh, haven't seen pretty graphics in, er, minutes.
id software used to be our heros, but by now I believe they simply dropped out. They used to be at the very fore-front of new ideas, new graphics, amazing ideas - these days, it's just like any other large software company: "Let's do the next version of our old game, and not risk anything really new. We'll advertise via pretty graphics, not with interesting game"
Re:...and? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that they are in it to make games. Are you sure that's a good assumption? Because, from where I sit, they seem to be more in the business of making game engines and licensing them, using DOOM to show it off rather than anything else.
Re:...and? (Score:1, Insightful)
But really...how many people license id Tech? Unreal and Renderware are significantly more popular choices (well, not Renderware so much now that it has been discontinued by EA or some such). Even Gamebryo/NetImmerse is a bigger competitor in the engine market than id.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only slashdot'ted, but super-slashdot'ted. I can't even get a byte back from them. And coral cache has similar problems.
Hint, in case this hasn't already occurred to people: DO NOT LINK TO A WEBSITE THAT CAN'T HANDLE TRAFFIC. Seriously, I don't think a single poster here has managed to actually see the screenshots at all.
This is the problem with heavily-dynamic websites - a few visitors and you need to add extra servers. At least with static content, you can serve up to the capacity of your internet connection.
Re:...and? (Score:1, Insightful)
Renderware is EA property anyway.
Unreal Engine is relatively cheap and for the last couple of years we've seen a crap load of shit and honestly really bad looking games made with it.
Gamebryo is not really a competitor. Or you really thinkg the same tech was used for Civilization IV and Fallout 3?
Re:...and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good on you to be the first to post that very common opinion that you no doubt have read here several times in the past. This will no doubt get you a well deserved +5, insightful.
Re:...and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Id actually developed an awesome survival horror game that those of us who enjoy such games loved. But everyone else in the world expected a shotgun gorefest and thus described it as boring, or whatever.
And the expectations were thus because they called it Doom.
I'm not sure why they did that. Possibly because Carmack is not a marketing guy. Possibly because Doom 3 was inevitably going to sell buckets whatever the content.
Saying they have dropped out is nonsense, you've just attached yourself to the 13 year old fanboi meme. Doom 3 was actually a very well executed game with good level design and well written game progression. It just wasn't what people expected.
However having said that, I'm not sure I care anymore either. FPS games bore me nowadays, and Id seemingly can only make those.
Re:...and? (Score:3, Insightful)
DOOM was great, DOOM II real fun. DOOM III was boring (yes, boring!)... these days, it's just like any other large software company: "Let's do the next version of our old game, and not risk anything really new."
So first you say Doom 3 was boring (I guess because it wasn't the action-packed game that you were expecting and because of the different atmosphere to the previous Dooms) and then you blast ID for not risking anything really new?
I think you are either contradicting yourself or that you don't know what you're talking about. Doom 3 went in a very different direction than the previous Dooms and I guess that just because they were trying to make something new, disappointed alot of people and were not very well received.
Personally, I thought Doom 3 was great.
A derivative survival horror game (Score:5, Insightful)
I like survival horror, but DooM was a derivative shockfest, it is what your typical big budget horror movie is to real horror movies. DooM III tried to be System Shock and failed (even copying the audio diary story telling format).
Hint: When something jumps out of every corner it ceases to be a surprise. I "won" DooM III when I realised the level designers would put the monster door right in the spot an FPS player would put their back to instinctively. After that point I would know roughly where the monsters were going to be.
Re:The rape of the series continues... (Score:3, Insightful)
BINGO. Serious Sam and Painkiller are the real successors to Doom I/II. Doom III was horrible in every way; it failed at emulating the successful formula of the first two games, AND it failed at blending in elements from other game formulas (the attempt at a story, the apparent attempt at a more atmospheric and realistic feel and horror type, etc.)
One or two enemies per room, "hiding" behind a pillar (IN EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ROOM) does not frighten me, nor does it keep with the frantic style of the first two games. Inexplicable monster closets are out of place in a game that makes any attempt at all at being something other than a silly action game. Being able to see my enemy or shoot at it, but not both at the same time is the sort of game mechanic that is only barely tolerable even in 3rd person survival-horror games in the mold of Alone in the Dark or Haunting Ground or something like that. I guess they realized that the single-zombie-or-imp-in-the-same-"hiding"-spot-in-every-room thing was too dull, and threw that crap in to "liven it up" or something--I mean, that's gotta be it, right?
I'd have been happy with a real Doom I/II-style game for Doom III, or with a more updated game that turned it in to a nerve-wracking survival-horror experience. They gave us neither of those things.
That said, two parts I enjoyed:
1. The opening cut-scene, up to about 15-20 minutes after the big event. During this part, my best guess was that I was going to be playing something like System Shock 2 minus the RPG elements crossed with the atmosphere and run-and-gun style of Alien vs. Predator, which was damn fine by me.
2. The last 1/4 or so of the game. Everything from Hell on felt much more like Doom how I remember it. If the whole game had been like that, I'd have been satisfied with it.
They failed pretty badly there (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire list of iDTech 4 games from Wikipedia:
Doom 3 - id Software
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil - Nerve Software
Quake 4 - Raven Software
Prey - Human Head Studios
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Splash Damage
Wolfenstein - Raven Software
A total of six titles, one of which is an expansion pack for their game. Now how about their main competitor, the Unreal Engine, specifically version 3 since that's the newest. Well I'm not going to copy and paste the list... Because it's huge. There's more than 50 games on it. You can see it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games [wikipedia.org] if you are interested. Also interesting to note is UE3 came out after iDTech 4.
Maybe their strategy is to just sell engines, but they don't seem to be doing well in that regard. Not nearly as well as they've done in the past at least. Also, in the past, they certainly seemed interested in selling their games. While they sold plenty of engine licenses for their older games, they also sold plenty of copies of those games, and there were tons of mods of said games released.
Personally, I was real underwhelmed with Doom 3 both as a game, and the engine backing it up. When it came out I really didn't feel it looked better than UT2004 (Unreal Engine 2). It had some neat effects, but over all I wasn't impressed with the appearance. Textures were rather low rez with no detail textures to deal with close up viewing, lighting was crap, the hard shadows made it only really good for dark, spooky games, and so on. When UE3 came out, it was just over.
Market seems to agree with me, as there have been tons and tons of UE licenses sold and very few iDTech 4 ones.
And re-veiled just as quickly (Score:3, Insightful)
"Interview removed by request of id Software."